During an interview with Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) President and CEO Greg Lukianoff that took place on Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time,” host Bill Maher remarked that while the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, and MIT were called to testify before Congress about antisemitism on campus earlier in the week, “they could’ve called a number of other colleges, like my alma mater, Cornell,” because “they’re a bunch of assholes up there these days too.”
Maher stated that “this is the week that they called the heads of Harvard and Penn and MIT, they could’ve called a number of other colleges, like my alma mater, Cornell, they’re a bunch of assholes up there these days too. But these were the three who were called.”
Maher then pointed to FIRE’s free speech rankings and noted that Harvard had the worst free speech ranking and Penn was “right next to them” and stated, “So, these are two of the colleges who are now on team Hamas.”
Lukianoff responded that the attempts by the Harvard and Penn presidents to claim they are supporters of freedom of speech are laughable and not believable because these schools haven’t defended free speech before.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
